Arts community stunned by news of David Griggs-Janower’s stroke

David Griggs-Janower, who was hit with a major stroke during surgery on Friday, is known for his work as an educator at the University at Albany and as founding director of Albany Pro Musica, the area’s premier choral group. It’s no exaggeration to call him one of the most significant and influential regional musical figures of the last thirty years. Here is the news announcement with word of his illness: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Choral-leader-suffers-stroke-4346446.php

The arts community is on tenterhooks. Concerned well-wishers have responded to a statement on the APM Facebook page with prayers and expressions of love and hope, reflecting both Janower’s standing in the music scene and the utter shock that met the announcement of his stroke.

But as his friends, family, colleagues and singers await more news of his condition, there’s another group that’s preoccupied, too: students in the Albany High School choral program. My younger daughter, a junior at AHS, came home last night talking about him. They know Janower from his visits to the school, and they’re worried.

Aside from all of his gigs and duties with APM and UAlbany, Janower has contributed greatly in time, expertise and passion to arts-in-education at area schools — including, for the last several years, a program at Albany High that sends Janower and Pro Musica members into AHS to work with the school’s Select Choir and their director, choral teacher Brendan Hoffman. Each spring, the program culminates in a joint APM/AHS concert at the Massry Center for the Arts at the College of Saint Rose.

Last year they sang, among other works, “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” and an Eric Whitacre song, “Cloudburst,” a piece as technically difficult as it is ethereal. It was stunning.

This year’s joint concert is a May 17 benefit for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. On the program: The Fauré Requiem, a monumental and demanding romantic masterwork. A choir from a Mount Sinai High School on Long Island is scheduled to join the singers from Albany Pro Musica and Albany High – where, like so many people in so many places around here, the kids in the music wing are waiting for word on Janower.

Amy Biancolli

2 Responses

David Griggs-Janower is a giant on the region’s arts scene, and Albany Pro Musica is a jewel. His TU blog has been a delightful read and source of knowledge for quite a while. Thoughts and prayers are with him and his family at this time.